Highlights: 16 Big Things that Happened this CES 2012

Consumer Electronics Show 2012 as finally come to an end. This year’s CES was all about Smart TV’s, Intel’s UltraBooks, new Android powered tablets and more gadgets. As expected there were raining Android Smart Phones and Windows Phones as well. While many gadgets were repetitive, we have handpicked the best gadgets out of the best of twenty thousand gadgets displayed in this years Consumer Electronics Show, starting with Ultrabooks:

Ultrabooks

The CES 2012 was basically all about Intel based Ultrabooks to boot with. Although it is sceptical to say will Ultrabook form factor beat the MacBook Air here are few interesting ones we found

1. HP Envy Spectre

Featuring a 14 inch form factor, HP’s entry into the ultrabook is made of glass. Spectre has a resolution of 1600*900. Specifications include a Core i7 processor, up to 256 GB of SSD storage, and maximum 8 GB of RAM. Price may sound steep at $1399.

2. Lenovo Ideapad Yoga

One word : Amazing. The Ideapad yoga is a great fusion of an ultrabook and a tablet. If you swivel the display by 180 degrees, you will get a full fledged tablet based on Windows 8. The yoga features a Core i7 processor and it will be released alongside Windows 8 by Lenovo.

3. Samsung Series 9

Not to be confused with the notebooks of the same brand, this is the most authentic competition to the MacBook Air shown at CES, even in design. Half-Inch thick and featuring a 13 inch screen. There are i5 or i7 variants allowing upto 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD. But be prepared to shell out a premium as the price is speculated to be around $1500.

Smart TV’s

Apart from the ultrabook fanfare there was all the Smart TV hype, meaning the future TV’s will never again be “Idiot Box” anymore. Below are some Smart TV’s that really stood out.

4. LG EM9600

Four MM in depth, 55 inch screen estate, this TV literally kicks ass. OLED technology behind, this one was easily CNET’s best of CES. LG’s passive 3D technology means you would not need any battery powered glasses to view 3D content. Funny enough, the TV is even thinner than any smart phone ever. Prices are of course expected to be sky high.

5. Ubuntu TV

The world famous free and open source operating system made its non PC debut in CES with Ubuntu powered TV’s. The interface really looks impressive and is especially made for remote friendly operation. Canonical the company behind Ubuntu says Ubuntu TV’s will be out by the year end.

6. Samsung Smart Window

The demonstration video in the link below explains it all. A giant transparent touchscreen in your living room, it can use natural light instead of backlight as well. But one must wonder how often will you have to walk to the screen.

Smartphones

7. Nokia Lumia 900

While everyone was busy writing Nokia off the US market, Nokia surprised everyone by its massive dominance at the CES, and the Lumia 900 is just the proof of it. It features a larger 4.3 inch display, 1.4 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM.

8. HTC Titan 2

This phone features an insane 16 Megapixel camera which drew lots of attention from the media. It also boasts the support for 4G LTE network. The phone boasts a 1.5 GHz Snapdragon 2 processor and 16 GB internal memory.

10. Motorola Droid Maxx

The Droid Maxx features a massive battery of 3300 mAh while most of the phones feature up to 1800 mAh, meaning you get huge battery life. The estimated talk time is a whopper of 21 hours, with 15 hours movie or two days of music. The Maxx runs on 2.3.5 Android with ICS upgrade “coming soon”.

11. Samsung Galaxy Note

This one is neither too new, nor unheard of, but still the quite fact that Note holds up to whatever claims it claims. The Note is being given aggressive publicity worldwide. Also this just might begin the revival of the PDA form factor.

Smart Watches

The Smart Watches were naturally one of the coolest gadgets being displayed at CES 2012 with some cool Android based Smart Watches from WIMM and I’m Watch. Sony showcased its improved SmartWatch as well.

12. I’m Watch

The name may sound too obvious, but this smart watch runs the older Android 1.6, features 450 MHz Freescale processor ,64 MB internal memory and 4GB built-in SD memory card. Though it does cost a dime at $249 for the basic model. Oh yeah you can make call, read email ,check out Facebook from your wrist…

13. WiMM Lab’s One

This one is similar to I’m Watch but features more recent Android 2.1 Éclair , supports unique micro apps and of course watch faces.The company has no plans to sell the Android Watch to consumers interestingly and it will be to the OEM’s to decide what form factor they wish to put it in.

14. Sony SmartWatch

Unlike the above two, this one is not a full fledged phone. Instead the Sony SmartWatch is an accessory , that connects to your Android phone via Bluetooth and displays a variety of notifications from social networks, emails. It even access and control of applications on your phone. The price is said to be around $149

Tablets

Although there were dozens of tablets from various manufacturers at the expo, this couple of tablets we feature below are the best of lot arguably.

15. Razer Project Fiona

Razer’s Project Fiona, is an amazing concept. This Tablet features x86 based Windows 7, and is built with hard-core gaming in mind. Hard to believe? It even features special gaming controls. This beast is touted to be based on Core i7 Processor, but there is no word about the GPU yet.